


Of Rosethorns & Requiems

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: (sort of he's already a spectre), Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Grief, Headcanons Aplenty, Hero Corruption, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Not Athena Sympathetic, Oneshot, Other, Pisces Albafica's POV, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sagiverse, Spectre!Pisces Albafica, no beta we die like gold saints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Sagiverse] Albafica has returned to the Meikai three hundred years after he sacrificed himself to save his family in the Holy War, turning against the Saints of Athena and paying for it with his life. Modern life doesn't agree with him, and he doesn't agree with modern life, either. If he wants to heal, he has to understand who and what he is. It's harder when he barely understands it himself.
Relationships: Pisces Albafica/Griffon Minos/Fracture Jesse (OC)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Of Rosethorns & Requiems

**Author's Note:**

> Mentioned / cameo characters include: Mandrake Fyodor, Garuda Aiacos, Wyvern Rhadamanthys, Leo Regulus.
> 
> If you want to know what is actually going on here, go [here](https://toyhou.se/~world/61401.sagiverse), as Sagiverse is a very expansive AU my fiance and I wrote. If you want to understand Sagiverse!Albafica's entire storyline, go [here](https://toyhou.se/~forums/25920.the-lost-canvas/191784.charybdis-albafica). If you want to learn more about Jesse, go [here](https://toyhou.se/8968918.fracture-jesse). You can trust that for all Sagiverse, we will provide the relevant links to character pages, so long as we actually have them written, which I may not. This is why I haven't posted anything since like, October. I've been working behind the scenes on Sagiverse, which is the ultimate true creation that is what happens when my fiance and I decide to turn all of our headcanons and AAverse/Mirrorverse into a proper, cohesive AU, and by holy hell, it is expansive, and if you have like six hours to kill, you can read about it like it's a wiki, because it is.
> 
> Everything in Sagiverse, at least until I figure out how pseuds work, will be posted to LocketShoru, and then moved to AstraDaemonia once I remember I should do that. This is so those who follow me only on LS maybe notice and follow me on AD if they want to read the Sagiverse fics. Non-Sagiverse will still be on LS, don't worry. This was actually written as the Yule present for my fiance, and needed some quick edits. So now, here it is, for everyone else.
> 
> Again, I will note, if you want to be around us in a Saint Seiya context more and you are prepared to hear more about Sagiverse, as it's all we really do nowadays; I do own a discord server, and I will give out a link upon request. :D

Albafica eyed the kitchen appliances with the sort of hesitant uncertainty that is typically only found in cats faced with their owners in rubber cat masks. The large, silver-looking box was a more modern version of an icebox, where they kept all the milk and which spit out ice on demand. The stove was something he recognized - mostly - and there was another box beside the stove that Jesse had told him was a dishwasher. He almost didn't want to know how it washed the dishes he put into it.

Something to be said about having to catch up on three hundred years of technology when both your fiance and fiancee know exactly what they're doing: everything felt like a magic he didn't understand and couldn't puzzle his way through. At the moment, he was staring at the fancy icebox, pushing the button and watching ice chunks fall into his glass, emptying them into the sink and pressing the button again.

He'd come out in the first place to see if there was any food he could eat for lunch. Minos was at work and Jesse was at the store, opting not to bring Albafica along until he was able to ride in the car without freaking out. But then again, horseless carriages were not something he ever thought he'd see, and "it runs on lightning and millions-of-years-old grass wine" wasn't an explanation he was inclined to trust.

Or maybe he just didn't trust most things anymore. He'd told everyone that one moment he'd been dying, and the next moment he'd been waking up in a garden full of roses that he'd never planted but knew all the same. There was an emptiness between those two moments, and he didn't know what was there, and he didn't particularly want to know what answers he would get if he asked. From the way his mind recoiled at the thought, he didn't think it would be a very fun activity.

The roses he'd woken up in had begun to fade the longer he was there, and he was glad for it. They were replaced with lavender and violets and allium and crocus and honeysuckle, a rainbow of colour that picked everything but the scent of roses. Nothing that he couldn't work with, but nothing that would hurt him. Nothing he needed to flinch at.

Eventually, he sighed and chose to brave an activity that usually got him banned from the kitchen, taking advantage of being the only one home: he opened a cupboard, found the questionably-paper packet with bright colours cheerfully labelled 'Kool-Aid', dumped the entire packet of powder into a jug, and followed the instructions of making it. He added extra ice - to ensure it would be a colder drink - and half the sugar. Sugar was a novelty and a rarity, and whenever he went into the pantry room, he ended up staring at a several-litre bin of the stuff, unsure how expensive it was and not at all prepared to ask. They were putting violet dye on packets of Kool-Aid, for Hades' sake, whatever the modern world had, it certainly involved better trade routes.

He stirred up the Kool-Aid, silent as ever, poured himself a glass, and settled into a chair in the kitchen. A part of the River Styx flowed through their garden, the red river of not-actually-blood that stemmed out of Sixth and poured down into Eighth, and if he went down to the stream and started fishing, he'd get a few cave fish for his troubles, and they tasted a lot better if doused with a ridiculous amount of spice and herbs - he did have to marvel at the variety - and speared over an open flame. So long as he was careful not to eat too much and ruin his appetite for dinner, he would be just fine.

For now, though, he winced at the sweetness of the cherry Kool-Aid, sipping the over-sugared drink. Maybe before he went fishing he'd go for a swim, stretch his fins. He didn't really feel like going for a swim - he hadn't ever really wanted to enter the water since he'd returned to life - but it was better than going for a run, and he was restless.

Restless was the worst thing to be. He'd overheard Jesse and Minos talking in dark tones when they thought he was off puzzling his way through the icebox a few days ago, and as much as he wished they'd brought their concerns up to him, he understood why they didn't. They were both unsure of his somewhat drastic change in personality: he was moodier, more clingy and more isolating, constantly restless, and very quick to recoil from touch where he'd previously craved it. He hadn't heard much of the conversation, but he'd heard enough to realize that something was wrong, something had been wrong the entire time.

Albafica had assumed that he just needed time to adjust, but this sort of moodiness and inability to settle into his own skin wasn't typical of needing time to adjust. He sighed again, draining his glass, leaving it in the sink over attempting to communicate with the dishwasher. He stuffed his thumbs in the pockets of his trousers and opened the back door, slipping out into the garden. He locked it behind him - he had a key, though he was fairly certain he didn't need it, and Ptolomea was humouring him - and started down the path to the stream.

It wasn't a sunny day, but it was warm, the sort of damp heat that predated a storm. He expected one to roll in tonight, long enough to irrigate the crops and fall asleep to the sound of soothing thunder, awakening to the pale dawn and dew on everything he could see. He liked that sort of damp warmth. It meant nothing but incoming safety, that he would return near midnight to the sound of rolling thunder and the first sprinkling of rain, and by the time he was in bed he'd listen to the heartbeats of his two lovers and the crackle of thunder over him, and he would be safe. He might not be safe yet, but he _would_ be, and that would meant everything in the world.

So he continued down the path, until an ear-fin picked up a whistle coming from one side - not a call of any creature he knew to live in these parts. If he dared to flare his cosmos a little - something he rarely did, nowadays - he could feel the presence of someone nearby. Someone who was actively masking themselves, but someone unfortunately a bit too powerful to properly manage it. He opened his mouth, tasting the air, questioning what it was that he could taste. The person tasted of death, a thousand ways and a thousand times, of quiet endings and paperwork and a wildness older than his mother, who he used as the metre-stick of all old things in the world.

He'd known that scent before, not in this form but that scent nonetheless, in a fourteen-year-old boy who he'd met only once, and who had smiled and asked him when he was coming home to stay. Those blue eyes would haunt him as long as he still had memory of anything that had ever happened to him, and they weren't the only pair. He broke into a run, towards the sound of whistling and the soothing scent of death, wondering, unsure of what he was going to find - magical signatures didn't change as you grew up, _his_ hadn't, was it really-? - and he broke into a small clearing full of flowers, asphodel and spider-lily and albafica, and his heart broke as he slammed to a stop.

He didn't immediately drop into a kneel, which would have been appropriate. The feature on the man's face were gaunt, too sharp to be what he was hoping for, too old to be new at this, too different to be his baby brother's almost-lover who might have been able to soothe his aching, restless heart.

The man looked up, and he had a book in his hands and a quote on his shirt that was certainly from _Paradise Lost_ , and his hair was black and his eyes were dark and filled with shadows, and he was someone Albafica had never met, and knew all the same. He forced himself to keep the disappointment off his face, choosing stoicism, choosing neutrality, and he sank into a kneel, head turned ever so slightly away, fins relaxed against his jawline and the side of his neck exposed. The sort of respect he was supposed to be giving the current vessel of Hades, regardless of who he wasn't. 

The man's cosmos - difficult to read, with how out of practice he was - flared into awkwardness and vague dissatisfaction. "You don't need to do that," he said softly. "You can get up. Did you need something?"

Albafica hid his wince with his hair, still long, only not unkempt due to valiant efforts from his two lovers, even with his own efforts to hide from the brush. "I…" His voice caught in his throat, and he raised his head, but still did not look in the direction of the vessel of Hades. To do so would be majorly disrespectful, unless he specifically asked for it. He couldn't lie, couldn't speak a falsehood without the words catching in his throat. Everything he could say to answer that question would stop his words before they left him. He didn't know what he wanted, if anything, and couldn't answer either way.

When he couldn't answer, an explanation of his actions would also do. "I was going for a walk," he said, slowly, testing each syllable, each word, each breath, in hopes it wouldn't stop him, "And I tasted a signature I almost recognized. I'm sorry."

"Ah. I see," the man said, his voice soft. "You're Albafica, aren't you?"

He nodded, and did not look at him. "I am."

"I was wondering if I'd get to meet you. You're… not what I expected, given what I've heard of you." Albafica flinched. He hadn't wanted to express what he felt about that, but his fins still drooped a little. He'd guessed that those who knew of his existence knew of the heroics, and of course they'd be disappointed. It wasn't like he had anything to show for it. Unfortunately, even without saying anything it was difficult to lie to the vessel of Hades, and the man let out an almost inaudible sigh. "I… see. I will get going, I ought to return to Judecca, but if you would seek my company, I'll be there." He rose with the aid of a walker that Albafica hadn't noticed from the other side of the rock the man had been sitting on, and he was gone.

He remained there a few moments, trying to swallow back the lump in his throat, allowing his fins to droop, and wondered if he was angry, sad, or simply disappointed in himself.

"Where are we going?" he asked, and Minos smiled, her hand carefully tucked into the crook of Albafica's elbow, her other hand in Jesse's prosthetic's elbow. Her inventions had improved greatly, and the level of technology of that arm matched anything else he'd seen in the Meikai so far. Jesse seemed to know where they were going, and they were dressed semi-formally. Albafica had picked a plain buttonup and a kilt - it made him look more formal than the actual effort he'd put in would say - and Minos was dressed in her surplice, hair left loose for the occasion.

"Board meeting," Jesse answered, and their voice was a little strained, like they weren't entirely certain about this plan.

Albafica raised an eyebrow and one fin, lowering the other two. "Board meetings aren't dangerous," he pointed out, slowly, unsure where the trap was. He hadn't been training and didn't have much faith in his abilities to protect either one of them - a glaring oversight on his part, now that he had noticed it was there - but Jesse's concern meant that there was a threat awaiting them in the board room, and he didn't like it.

"It's the first time you'll be with us at one again, that's all, Alba-mine," Minos answered, tone lackadaisical and voice prim. It was difficult to ruffle her for long, at least where he could see. She was good at hiding her emotions when she wanted to, and the thought of it was more terrifying than the idea of a board meeting. He hadn't mentioned his encounter with the vessel of Hades, the same way he hadn't been mentioning very many things since he had returned. "Jesse and I agree that you might be able to settle down a little better if you were allowed to help, so we may test the waters and see how strong the current may be against you. Small leaps, and we will find ourselves on the other side of the rapids."

Minos stepped ahead of them both at the end of the hallway, pushing the doors open and fluffing out her wings to part her way to her place at the head of the table. This was on rank, not on favouritism, and Jesse lead Albafica to low-middle-ranking seats, high enough to not be apprentices, low enough to say they weren't true Spectres meant to be here. The implication stung a little, but it was true, and he couldn't argue with it without a surplice to back him up. The room was already half-full, and a few moments later, everyone was inside and seated, and the meeting began.

Rhadamanthys ran them through the few important updates on trade sanctions and their allies, noting a power change in Artemis' forces and imploring a couple of the lower-ranked Celestials to kick it up a notch with their exports. Minos noted the upcoming festival of Lughnasadh, reminding everyone to stop trying to make a tradition of setting their festival supplies on fire before Aiacos took over with a soft, half-feral growl of a birdcall that made Albafica's fins tense up and flare.

"Sanctuary's been getting a bit uppity," he said darkly, a scroll in hand and sitting in an odd position. The current Pisces Spectre - a person of indeterminate gender who looked uncomfortably like Albafica whose name he'd learned was Laures - nodded, their own fins flaring in immediate dislike. Their gray-blue fins were the clear Pisces shark, same as his late father Lugonis, marking their rank and surplice clear as day. "Grand Master Kanon's been pushing at our borders again and violating a few treaties. He's getting pushier in Starburgh and he had a Gold Saint confront the mayor of Hazelton a few days ago. It's upsetting Sebastian and it's pissing me off. Who feels like committing a massacre or two to scare them off?"

Albafica started to raise his hand. Jesse caught his wrist and lowered it before he had it more than three inches in the air. If it were up to him, he'd take the fight to Sanctuary themselves - it was clear enough that dying hadn't even made a dent in them. Another mid-ranked Celestial with an eyepatch raised his hand, as did Basilisk Sylphide, who he recognized. Aiacos nodded.

"Fyodor, Sylphide, go for it. Don't engage with Saints, if you see them, take notes and vanish. Just set some explosives off and make some noise, let them know we're not hibernating down here."

It wasn't typical of lower-ranked warriors to speak, let alone interrupt a Judge. He didn't care. "That isn't going to work," he said, and his voice was calm and clear. He looked Aiacos in the eye, refusing to acknowledge the raised eyebrows around the table. "You won't scare them off by setting off some explosives. You'll just get their attention and they'll start trying to dominate the area to prove they're the biggest and the baddest. Get a stealth agent, slip them into the training bunkers, cut the shoelaces of every single cadet, and kill one in each bunker. They'll drop like flies from the fear or insomnia it causes."

Several Spectres stared at him. He didn't look at any of them. There was a dark emotions in Aiacos' eyes, and he didn't know how to read it, and he didn't know how to ask, either.

"We're trying to get them to stop violating treaties, not start another Holy War," Aiacos answered, somewhat gruff, but amused all the same.

Fyodor, the Celestial with the eyepatch picked for the mission, rolled his good eye. "We don't have the forces for another Holy War right now, and they do, and unless you're certain you can take on the entirety of Sanctuary on your own a second time and somehow win, we're not doing that."

Albafica tensed. A soft whistle hissed through his gills, getting louder by the moment. Minos opened her mouth to say something, and was cut off by Rhadamanthys growling, "Take it outside if you're going to start a fight, Pisces." Albafica eyed him, aware of Fyodor settling back into his seat before relaxing his fins himself. There wasn't anything he could do about it, and he wasn't going to be the one who started a fight in the middle of a board meeting.

The meeting continued, with a few questions being passed back and forth and a few plans being drawn. He slipped back into his thoughts, paying only enough attention to tell if something was important. After a little bit, one of the newer Celestials raised their hand.

"Master Sebastian's been a little off lately, anyone know what's up with that?" she asked, looking a little concerned. The Spectres only used the 'Master' title for one person. Albafica flicked a fin in interest, aware now of what the name was for the vessel of Hades. Sebastian, then.

"He's always off, ain't he?" Pharaoh pointed out. "Been all fucked up since we woke him up."

"Why is that?" Albafica asked, somewhat abruptly. "It's never been explained to me why he is the way he is."

Aiacos sighed, and raked a hand through his hair. "Well, Master Sebastian had a wife and a child on the way, then Sanctuary happened. They damn near killed him, kidnapped Liadan, and we were lucky we were able to keep Master Seb alive. He spent over a decade in a coma, and we still don't know where Liadan is, or if their child survived, or _anything_. He's angry we couldn't stop it, and that it happened, and he won't blame us for it, but there's nothing anyone can do but hope he decides one day to remember that we're his family, too." Aiacos shrugged, his dark red eyes intense against the dark tones of his face. 

Albafica was silent for a moment. "I see," he said, finally. Laures, the current Pisces, looked deeply uncomfortable. It might have been their poison that Sanctuary had used. Now that he thought about it, he was almost certain of it. It was the kind of casual cruelty they thrived on. 

The meeting ended not long after that on a halfway sour note. Albafica slipped into the crowd of those leaving first, allowing Minos and Jesse to find their own way back, and climbed out a window to escape into the dry, static evening air.

He was angry, and he wasn't sure what for, or why. There simply wasn't much rhyme or reason to it. He ascended to the nearest balcony, climbing up the easy stone wall, before hoisting himself up onto the railing and looking out at the Meikai. This was his home. The wind made ringlets and waves and curls of his hair, his jawline unshaven and a bit unkempt, and it was all he could do to look at the west of the setting sun over the horizon of Mag Mell. It made a little more sense, now, why Sebastian had been so uncomfortable. He didn't see the Spectres as family, and so did not understand them, did not know how to read him even though Albafica couldn't read himself either, half the time.

He raised his hand, flaring a single ember of cosmos into the middle of his palm. A single albafica blossom bloomed in his palm, black stem and orange centre and blue petals streaked with white.

"What would you say to all of this, Rere?" His voice was abrupt, and he almost didn't recognize it as his own for a moment. "What would you say is wrong with me?" The flower didn't answer, but a breeze caught his hair for a moment, carrying on it the faintest trace of the deep undergrowth of the forest of Sixth, and off the tides of Mag Mell, a hint of seagrass. He winced. It only really hurt more, and it wasn't him, not really.

In the four months since he'd been resurrected and returned to life, he'd spoken his baby brother's name once before now. Once, to ask if he too had returned. Regulus, who had given his life to buy Albafica time. Regulus, whose life he'd thrown away by sacrificing himself in the end anyway. Regulus, who he taught and raised and loved, who he missed like he might have missed his own heartbeat. Regulus, who he would have died to protect. Regulus, who was gone, and who wasn't coming back.

 _This is how Master Sebastian feels_ , said the thought that was drifting through his mind. Grief boiled and turned to hot rage in an instant. He'd met Hades Alone once, and only once, and in that one moment he would have done what any Spectre would and have slaughtered even the nice girl at the flower shop if he'd asked him to. He couldn't have his baby brother back, because Athena had killed him. Sisyphus, to be more exact, had been forced to kill him, held under a technique of Asmita's until he no longer knew what he was doing. Sisyphus, who wasn't at fault, but he couldn't forgive.

Master Sebastian, who hadn't deserved any of this, and who had still lost his family. His family who Athena wouldn't have killed, because they were still valuable. Liadan would not have gone to another Underworld. If she were dead, they would know about it. Which meant she had to be alive.

He rose from his kneeling position on the railing as the sun set below the horizon, streaking the blue sky with red. Red like blood. Red like rage. Red like his father's Sundown Roses, meant not to kill but to torture. In his hand where the albafica flower had been, a Sundown Rose bloomed, petals black as night at the centre and studded with glittering stars and blue-streaked-with-red at the tips, thorns small and hidden among the black stem and leaves, the white line of the veins along the leaves.

A glitter shimmered in the air before him. He reached out with his free hand, cupping the small, sparking thing, noting the iridescence that sparkled around its edges. _Take me with you_ , it seemed to say, with a shudder down his back. _Take a taste of what I've got for you_. He knew what it was. No one who had ever breathed the Meikai air could've not known what it was. He cupped his hand around it, allowed it to settle into his palm. He passed it to his mouth, and swallowed.

Regulus was gone. Liadan wasn't, not yet. He couldn't have his brother back, there was no way he was still alive somehow, not after three hundred years. But he could avenge him. 

He leaned forward, eyeing the moonrise, and jumped off the railing, sailing into the bitter winds of Eighth.

The doorway opened up on the trunk of an ancient willow tree overlooking a cliff. Rodorio was visible at the bottom, and not far away, Sanctuary itself. The view stirred at a memory inside, until he blinked, realizing where he was. He turned to look at the willow briefly. There was where Minos had been, on that branch, hanging upside down with her skirt over her knees and a bright smile on her face and roses in her hair. There was where Jesse had sat down on the roots of the willow, a mug of tea in their one hand, chuckling at a terrible joke. And there was where he had been, when he'd kissed Minos for the first time, where Jesse had done the same.

This was where they had met. This was the place that marked the beginning of his downfall. The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement - the Meikai did love its poetry - and he opened his mouth to scent the air. He was looking for Liadan, who after all this time, would still smell like Sebastian. Those marked by the Judges and the gods of the Meikai always did. Anyone who could smell him would smell Minos, and so thus, anyone who could smell Liadan could smell Master Sebastian. It was just a matter of tracking that secondary scent.

He breathed in deeply, tasting the magical signatures of all who had stood here, all whose scents were carried on the wind to here, looking between teenage lovers and aspiring artists and Gold Saints on a thought train, until he caught the faint scent of the loving dead on the wind. Now he just had to track it.

He jumped off the cliff, sailing into the air, down towards the village that he'd let burn to protect those he loved. He could follow that scent of death better than anything else, now that he was focused, now that his cosmos had begun to burn again, blacker than ever before, and somehow, brighter. He expected roses to bloom where he had been standing, not an impromptu waterfall. But it made for a good image anyway. 

He landed at the front gates, evenly split between Aries and the training grounds. Whoever was in the Aries Temple now, they weren't home. It didn't matter. Two guards flanked the gate, one on either side, and they looked just the same. Spears and helmets and Spartan-style leather armour. Albafica rose from how he'd landed, opening his mouth to show off five rows of fish teeth. His hair was wild and unbrushed from travel, and if there was a look in his eyes they could see, it wasn't a human one.

He snarled. One guard clenched his spear, pointing it towards him. It was tipped with bronze, nothing particularly damaging. The other guard dropped his spear and bolted. Albafica let a soft sound of mirth out of his gills, three on each side of his neck and a second trio on each side of his ribs. The remaining guard opened his mouth to say something, some sort of threat in hopes he would leave. They never got the chance: his teeth were already locked in on either side of their neck, and when he pulled himself free he took most of their throat with him, spitting the chunk of flesh onto the ground.

They stared at him in disbelief and fear from under the visor of their helmet. He grinned. One down, as many as he liked to go. Uncaring of the blood running down each side of his cheek, he stepped through the gates. The other side held four Bronze Saints, burning their cosmos as brightly as they could - which was to say, approximately a fraction of his own blackened and enraged cosmos.

"Go on, go find reinforcements," he said, and the Irish accent was strong under his words. It was always stronger the less in control of his emotions he was. It was lucky anyone at all understood what he was saying. "I'll be long gone by the time you get back with them. _Royal Demon Rose!_ "

They charged him. Each and every one dropped at the roses, taking them to the torsos, shoulders, and one lucky soul right between the eyes. One charged him from behind and he spun on his heel, grabbing their collar with one hand and throwing them into the nearest pillar. He continued up the stairs, straight through Aries and up through Taurus. Several guards and Bronzes tried to stop him. The ones that didn't run died. The ones that realized they should run survived. An enterprising Silver had aimed a crossbow at him, only for Albafica to go for his throat. He lead a slaughterhouse up the stairs of the temples, trusting the stairway between them to run red for him.

He darted off to one side when he saw Cancer, following a thin, winding trail around the temple until the prison appeared before him, built into the cliff to keep anyone from escaping. That wasn't true, of course. It was possible to get into any cell in the prison, if you knew how to talk to the buildings.

That was the problem no one seemed to realize was there. So much cosmos had been pressed into this mountain, so much sacrifice, so much death energy that had never been pulled out. Press enough magic into anything and it starts to think for itself, and Sanctuary was a place where reality had a point of instability. The warping that the Geminis, Aries, and Virgos tended to cause was more than enough reason, if not for the others all calling it into existence.

He reached out and brushed a hand across the carved stone of the prison. "This isn't right, and you know it," he said, voice dropping to a whisper. "I'm sorry it took me so long to come back. But I have to set this right."

A doorway appeared before him, the stone withdrawing to expose a tunnel that hadn't been there until he'd asked for it. Because he'd needed it. He broke into a run, descending into the tunnel, feeling the water run at his feet. It wasn't freshwater, or sewage, or tears - no, this was seawater, clean and pure, following him. Everything he'd been had always come down to the roses. Maybe it was time for something else to claim him, now that he was shrouded in darkness.

The scent of death was still up ahead, the death that followed Master Sebastian over the death of those who hadn't made it out of the prison. There was a different tang to it, a softness of the Meikai versus a tangible grief and misery and anger. He could taste the difference, even if he could never have explained it. No Spectre could. They could taste it, because they were animals, because they were the monsters of myth, and that meant having the senses of them.

The tunnel broke out into a hallway, deep within the prison, cages to either side, prison cells with stains of old blood on the tiles but largely empty. There was cosmos up ahead, river-water and amber and coral combined with death, misery, and…

Tuatha de Danann. The very type of fae that he knew best. Spellcasters who sang their spells and followed fiddlers to their death, who couldn't stand the touch of rowan or of iron but could twirl burning elder and ash and thorn around their fingers like it was nothing. Children of Danu, demigods turned spirits turned fae when the definition changed. The children who had walked away from the Median Plane and dove into the twin Arcanas when their human playthings stopped believing in them. 

Nobody had told him Liadan was Tuatha, just like himself, until he'd been able to taste her magical signature on the air. It was too fainted to pick out the individual elements of it, but it was there, and his footsteps grew silent save for the seawater at his toes, endlessly running as he slipped up to the occupied cell. Someone else was there, some sort of water spirit whose scent he couldn't pick out but whose species he was sure he knew, in the faded part of his mind that had been taught to remember all of these things. The click of metal heels sounded as the water spirit walked out of the cell towards him. The heels belonged to a woman of slightly below average height, with ashy blonde hair and the waterlogged-looking skin of a naiad.

Albafica narrowed his eyes, and the naiad tsked. "I remember you. In their memories. You really are a little traitor, and you can't stay dead."

He bared his teeth. "Is that Liadan in the cell?" he demanded, Irish accent thicker than cold butter over untoasted bread. The naiad narrowed her eyes, a sure sign he was right.

"I'm afraid I can't let you leave with that information, little beast," she answered. " _Bloody Rose_."

He tensed and sidestepped, careful to move slow enough that her rose drove itself into his shoulder. He turned away from her, allowing her to think she'd hurt him. She made a scoffing noise, and he smiled, baring his teeth. He ripped the rose from his shoulder, discarding it, dropping it into the water at his feet.

He was on top of her in a moment, reaching teeth for her throat, snarling and hoping to kill her quickly. She dropped like a stone, diving under him, skidding away. She yelled something he didn't quite catch, and he didn't care, because he was lunging forward again.

He slammed into something his size and golden, holding him back, immovable and unshakeable and cosmos ever so painfully familiar.

_:That is enough, Albafica.:_

He froze where he was, looking up into the empty helmet of the Cloth that had murdered his father, that he'd worn for years until he'd found a way to get away from them. The Cloth that had taken everything from him, who had damned him, who had abandoned him, who he could never have forgiven for a single thing they'd ever done.

"Get out of my _way_ ," he snarled, sidestepping and shoving past them. Pisces caught his wrist again, their gloved grip stronger than oak against him.

 _:Hayliel, the iron, if you will. I did not believe he had returned, but I dislike his appearance here. It does not bode well for the survival of my lady's army.:_ Their voice was more metallic, static, than anything else. That too, was new. They had not spoken before, had not moved and stopped his actions and given orders. He'd known they were capable of it, but he had never seen it, never known it to happen.

Hayliel - the naiad Pisces Saint, surely - stepped behind Pisces and out of view for a moment, returning with a long, well-used and rusted iron chain. Albafica's eyes widened, his body tensing, the seawater at his ankles rising.

He, like Liadan, like Luco and Lugonis, was Tuatha de Danann. And iron could kill the fae. Something white-hot bubbled up in his throat and he snarled, yanking his wrist out of Pisces' grip. He took two steps back, two steps away from those chains, away from Liadan. Regulus had died by an iron arrow tipped with golden and enchanted with a curse so powerful Athena had never done it twice. The Sagittarius Saints had always been the executioners.

Their golden light shone brightest when the sun drowned. Golden just before the dark. The Sundown Roses, Lugonis' final, perfect work of art, the art of torture he'd loved so much, their dual poisons enough to punish any wicked soul for their crimes. But even their poisons died with the night, when fae folk woke and came to play with the closing of the day.

The water coalesced around him, rising, wrapping itself around his bloody clothes and his bare shins and forearms like moth's-silk, like a curse, like a binding. Fae folk come to play at close of day, the hunting horns calling the Spectre Ride to come this way. All that was made possible by the sun drowning into the black. Sunrise. Sundown.

Moonrise.

A glitter surrounded him, the sort of glitter that he could almost recognize when he called the Pisces Cloth to love him like a true Saint, a sensation he'd never thought he'd feel again. Sturdy leather shoes and cotton socks into metal boots, kilt pressed closer to his thighs by the weight of tassets. Water slipping up his arms until it had molded into the cold, unforgiving press of gauntlets. The weight on his shoulders not of grief or responsibility but of pauldrons and a gorget. The weight of the crown, of the helmet, wrapping itself around his fins and molding itself to his form. His hair, thickening, sharpening at the tips, dyeing itself a deep, bloody red.

He landed with a starlight shimmer in the air and burning, blackened cosmos around him. Pisces and Hayliel had been thrown halfway across the hallway, soaking wet, the entire hall drenched in the seawater he'd conjured.

 _:I am Seigneur Charybdis, Surplice of the Singing Deep,:_ whispered a feminine, familiar, resonant voice in his ear. Charybdis. Eldest daughter of Icthỳes, god of vengeful death, made from the blood they wiped off their lips as they wept, twin of Cetus who had been born from the tears. His eldest sister, monster turned Surplice turned the one who stood by his side when he'd needed her to the most. : _It's time to come home.:_

His cosmos burned, black and bright and studded with diamond stars and the smoke of hydrothermal vents. The roses of the sea. He bared his teeth, feeling his fins that had replaced his ears elongate, the poisonous lionfish spines grow darker and more saturated in colour. The taste of different signatures in the air bloomed before him: Hayliel's river-water and amber and red coral, Pisces' starlight over water and roses, and fainter but all-too-clear, Liadan's graveyard soil, cigarette smoke, and asphodel blossoms.

" _Bolton's Sorrow_ ," he hissed, and the hallway exploded. 

If Hades Sebastian looked up from the floor of the dais upon which his throne was placed, he would have seen several things. If he looked to his left, he would have seen Aiacos, arms folded, sitting sideways in his Judge's throne, looking profoundly unamused; and Rhadamanthys, standing, wyvern's tail lashing with his anger as he argued with his younger sister. If he looked to his right, he'd find Dr. Jesse Wen, seated in Minos' throne, bionic and flesh hands both tight around their cane, staring straight ahead with the ramrod-straight posture of chronic back pain and terror to the very centre of their bones; and Minos herself, yelling at her older brother with her own griffon's tail lashing fasher than Rhadamanthys'.

It would've looked less sad, and less funny, if Minos weren't currently the tallest at five-foot-six. Rhadamanthys was not a tall man, although Aiacos more so. Sebastian couldn't stand completely straight anymore, thanks to Sanctuary poisoning him, but Jesse would have put them all to shame if only they'd bothered to stand. If, however, he'd looked up and forward, this is what he would have seen: 

A man who stood six-foot-one including the heels of his boots dragged his feet as he strode up the open hallway to the doors of the throne room, sopping wet and the sound of his footsteps and the water at his heels muffled by the thick violet carpet. His hair was the dark, bright red of a garnet or of fresh blood, and it hung limp and straight almost to his knees. He had three inches of facial hair, two chunks carefully braided on either side of his chin and pulled back, albafica blossoms carefully woven into the braids of his beard. He wore a surplice of deep blue, almost black, studded with jewels as red as his hair, shining ever so slightly with mother-of-pearl rainbows.

He was carrying an unconscious woman dressed in a chiton made of a shimmering silver cape, torn at the edges and pinned into place with Sundown Roses. The Judges froze as the Spectre crossed the threshold of the throne room. Sebastian looked up, staring at the Spectre who bore Charybdis, a surplice not seen since the Age of Myth, locked away for their bloodthirstiness, their sadism too dangerous to be called upon. A monster who had given her life to serve them, whose plea they had to deny.

The Spectre stepped the acceptable five paces from the dais, and looked up. His eyes were a dark blue and his skin was Irish-fair, splattered with the same freckles that splattered Liadan's gaunt face and shoulders. A single dark mole pressed itself to the outer corner of his left eye. He looked almost shell-shocked, but the gorget of his surplice exposed his throat, and within it, Sebastian could see the Celestial Demon Star of Moonrise glowing, glittering, almost smug for all the time it'd had to wait for him to come home.

"Albafica?" asked Minos.

"Liadan?" asked Aiacos.

Rhadamanthys just stared, and so did Sebastian and Jesse.

It was Albafica himself who broke the silence. "Athena killed my baby brother," he said, simply. "She used our father's brother to do it. It's not right for the vessel of Hades to suffer, that's our job. We're the Spectres. I can't bring my brother back to me. But I can bring your wife back to you, and in doing so, maybe my brother can rest, knowing he's been avenged as best he can be." He stepped up to the dais, and offered Liadan's limp, unconscious form to him.

Sebastian took her. She was breathing, a River Lethe Rose in one hand, just enough to keep her asleep and from fussing during the journey.

Albafica stepped away again. Sebastian looked up at him. "Thank you," he whispered, and Albafica gave a slight nod in return.

"I may have killed a few dozen people," Albafica admitted. Sebastian's mouth twitched up in half a smile.

"They deserved it," he agreed.

Albafica settled into the creek, just deep enough into the water that the gills on his ribs could open and breathe the river-water. He was humming as he scrubbed the blood out of Charybdis' rivets and joints. _"'Cause she’s a cruel mistress, and a bargain must be made._ "

Even now, he could almost smell it, and it hurt his heart to smell. The Meikai was alive, it was only doing it in a vain attempt to make him feel better. It wasn't even so different from his surroundings, not really. He wasn't far from Sixth, and it was a river, after all. The deep undergrowth, and seagrass. So alike to the Meikai's natural biome, and just different enough he knew he wasn't imagining things. Now, though, unlike every other moment he'd been able to smell it since he'd woken up again, it was underscored by the faintest trace of static lightning.

The water rippled behind him, and Jesse slid down next to him, setting their cane to the shore of the creek and immediately leaning over to put their face on his bare, somewhat-hairy chest. " _But oh, my love, don’t forget me,_ " they answered, softly singing, " _When I let the water take me_."

Albafica smiled, a soft, sad twist of a thing, and put his arm around them. Jesse leaned into him a little more. "I miss him," he admitted. Jesse nodded.

"Regulus was a good kid," they agreed. "I think he'd be proud of you, just like how you've always been proud of him. I mean… Mavros' hair turned black when he turned. Yours apparently goes red. I wonder what colour his might've gone."

Albafica let out a soft noise of amusement. "Green as kelp and moss," he said, and he didn't know if it would've been true, but it would have made sense. "Or striped like the lionfish he was. Do you remember the story I told you, about how we found out he was more fish than cat?"

"You got shoved off a cliff and fell a thousand feet into the sea while chasing down a mercenary company, and he thought you were going to die, so you told him to just trust you and he did, you both shapeshifted and turned into fish, and then you hit the water with a Piranha Rose to break the surface tension right before you smashed into the sea? Yeah, I remember that." Jesse looked up at him, and smiled. "Do you think Charybdis is a good fit for you?"

Albafica smiled, and nodded. "I think we'll do well together," he admitted. "It's… good, to finally get this far. I think I can start doing a bit better. I just… I couldn't get over the fact that he's gone. I don't think I still can. Not right now."

Jesse leaned up, and pressed a gentle, shuddering kiss to his lips. They slipped their arms - one flesh, one bionic and waterproof - around his neck. "You don't have to," they answered, and their voice was gentle, soft, loving. "One day at a time. And who knows? If we came back, maybe he can, too. We'll bring him back if we can, and we'll make things right."

Albafica nodded, the scent of static lightning still lingering in the air. "Right," he said. "Let's do that."


End file.
